A New Chapter in Vance’s Effort to Police Who’s American
JD Vance visited Florida yesterday, stumping for candidates in races that for a few cycles have been safely red. Among them was Republicans’ candidate for U.S. Senate, Ashley Moody, who was appointed by governor Ron DeSantis (R) to replace Secretary of State Marco Rubio and is now running for reelection against Angie Nixon, a Florida state legislator. Nixon is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who won a surprise primary victory over Trump impeachment figure Alexander Vindman.
As Vance attacked Nixon, he cast her as a dangerous radical. “When Angie Nixon calls herself a socialist, I think the right response is to say, ‘Then get the hell out of here. You don’t belong in America,’” the vice president declared. The crowd cheered.
“The most ordinary man imaginable came to my home state to tell me to ‘get out of America’ while they enjoyed the comfort of buildings my ancestors built,” she wrote on social media. “Imagine standing on the shoulders of the ppl who built this country & then telling their descendants they don’t belong here,” said Nixon, who is Black.
“Wanting lower property insurance & healthcare for families isn’t un-American; it’s what working people deserve,” she continued. “They can take their tech-bro cash and their weird, intrusive agenda somewhere else, because I’m not going any damn place.”
Recent polls in Florida have shown Nixon running behind Moody, and Democrats’ candidate for Florida governor, David Jolly, neck-in-neck with Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate Rep. Byron Donalds (R). Trump won Florida in 2024 by 13 points. Vance’s remarks Thursday were in Polk County, a reliable MAGA stronghold.
Vance, who, famously, once mused about whether Trump was merely a “cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful)” or “America’s Hitler,” has attempted a reinvention as a kind of MAGA intellectual. A key aspect of that has been policing who is truly American. He devoted much of his speech at Republicans’ midterm convention to discussing his view of the American “birthright,” and has articulated the idea that those whose ancestors have been in America for longer have greater claim to it.
Defining Americanism by its idealistic principals alone would “reject a lot of people that the ADL would label as domestic extremists, even though those very Americans had their ancestors fight in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War,” he said in a 2024 speech to the Claremont Institute, referencing the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit that as part of its work spreads information about hate groups.
“I think the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don’t belong,” he added, seeming to suggest that peddlers of hate are more American than members of a group, founded by Jews to fight antisemitism, that denounces them.
Dems Propose to Slash Russ Vought’s Funding if Trump Continues to Violate Anti-Propaganda Laws
A new bill introduced by Senate Democrats seeks to penalize Trump for running campaign ads on the taxpayer’s dime.
- Patty Murray (D-WA), the ranking member on the Senate Appropriations Committee, introduced the bill, which would cut the White House Office of Management and Budget’s funding by $20 million each time the Trump administration violates laws prohibiting taxpayer funding of propaganda, as it has been in recent days by running campaign ads as “public service announcements.”
- One such law violated by these ads is the 2026 appropriations bill, agreed to by members of both parties and signed by Trump, which includes the line: “No part of any appropriation contained in the act or any other Act shall be used directly or indirectly, including through a private contractor, for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by Congress.”
- Actions like this turn the spotlight to appropriations committee chair Susan Collins (R-ME) who has often critiqued the administration’s violation of appropriation laws, but done little to rein it in.
- Collins, who is in a reelection fight, has acknowledged that the ads are being payed for with money appropriated to the Department of Homeland Security, and that running them goes “around the appropriations process.”
Tabs
- Republicans are now running fewer ads in Senate races in North Carolina and Georgia, states Trump won in 2024, Punchbowl reports.
- Trump is considering choosing Jay Clayton, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and current director of national intelligence, as his “AI czar,” CBS reports.
Man of the Hour
It’s Richard Nixon, getting a second look from Trump’s Justice Department to see if he was actually a victim of the Deep State — the same shadowy force that has so vexed the current president — the whole time.
Are We at War?
The U.S. is sending a third aircraft carrier and 10,000 more troops to the Middle East amid its war with Iran, suggesting the administration’s effort to keep the conflict at a slow boil until after the midterms may not be panning out.
